


and nothing ever does begin, like nothing ever ends

by jublis



Series: heirloom [11]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Angst, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Established Relationship, FOR ONCE. NO MENTIONS OF OZAI, Friendship, Gaang (Avatar) as Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Love, Multi, Not really underage drinking, Post-Canon, Rated T for Toph, author is extremely emotional writing this, doctor who time, fuck that garbage man, how pretentious can i get, i said oh so we're talking about the passage of time?, is there such thing as bittersweet fluff?, kind of character study-ey in some parts, very very brief mention of korra, yeah uhhh i wrote this while listening to hadestown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25982374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jublis/pseuds/jublis
Summary: There are many ways for this story to start. There are many ways for it to end, too, though we will try not too linger too much on them. We will look away and practice a smile on the mirror, close our eyes and focus on things when they were swift and beautiful and bright, when a summer’s day was always warm, and the good times were always good, and there was nothing to forgive. We will look at the boy in the iceberg, and the warriors, and the children, and the prince, and we will always be discovering magic for the first time.Here is a well-known secret: everything ends, and that’s always sad.Here is a not so well-known fact: everything begins again, and that’s always happy.Or, there are many ways this story begins and ends. It depends on who you ask.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar), Azula (Avatar)/Original Female Character(s), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko, Toph Beifong & Sokka
Series: heirloom [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808977
Comments: 107
Kudos: 383





	and nothing ever does begin, like nothing ever ends

**Author's Note:**

> well. hi.
> 
> first of all, i just want to say: thank you. whether you've read this series since the beginning, or if you just started right now. thank you for the kudos, and the hits, and the honestly overwhelming amount of love i've received from this fandom. you guys make writing so, so worth it.
> 
> title is from "atoms," by nana grizol. (man, i'll miss using songs from my comfort underground indie band as titles.)

There are many ways this story starts.

Depending on who you ask, it begins with a boy between cracks of ice, a century out of time and a day into war. The boy with the blue arrows and the easy grin, wind swirling around his feet. The impossible boy, a thing of memories and tales strung around a bonfire, of a people lost to cruelty. It begins when for one moment—one fleeting, beautiful moment—these people are not yet dead. Because in this moment, this boy is breathing and real and here. And he does not know, not yet. 

Maybe it begins and ends there.

Or maybe it starts years before, in a snowfall blackened with ash. When a mother tells her daughter to run, tells her that it will all be okay. When a mother lies. When grief becomes a physical thing, crawling and festering and gnawing, biting away whole chunks of a small village, in danger of being lost to the sea. It begins on the edge of oblivion; it begins right before it ends; it never ends at all. When the warrior boy counts his steps on the ice, counts his steps on the snow, knowing each silent sound might as well be his last, that this has always already happened. Forgetting is a hard thing to live just one step away from, but it’s all this brother and this sister have ever known. It begins when one parent dies and the other goes away. Because wherever they go, parents leave silence behind them. No one knows that better than the children. 

Depending on who you ask, this story doesn’t begin in the ice at all. It begins beneath blazing sunlight and an open courtyard, high walls and red tapestries. It begins in the dead of night, with a mother’s leaving in the air. It begins with a young prince and a young princess, ashes between their fingers as they spar, one single question swirling around them: _What now?_ Maybe it starts right here, when one of them is able to say the other’s name and not taste coal on their tongue, when they can look at each other and pretend they don’t see the bruises that seem to never fade away. Maybe it begins with a burning, a scorching, a banishing; maybe it even begins with healing. But that’s a different story.

Maybe the beginning rests on the shoulder of a small girl. A mighty girl. With dirty feet and a face streaked with earth, blind eyes and a wild, wild heart. Maybe the beginning is the day she decides she will fight and she will never stop, that she can move mountains and shake worlds, that she is small and young and unbreakable, that she will take this earth with her bare hands and carve herself into every inch of it. A young girl’s anger. Nothing else can quite make the world stop and yet keep spinning.

It can begin with the girl who is a warrior who is a girl, and an island that travels in circles, a serpent eating its own tail. The sort of girl that bites and scratches at life, who makes the world bleed with her because this is the price she demands. When the world gives you nothing, you take it; when it gives you no space, you carve it out yourself, out of bone and grief and love and spite.

It can begin with death, also. The definitive ending.

Who ever said this story was a happy one? There is no such thing as a happy story. There are, however, stories about people. And sometimes, that can be enough. 

(“It was,” Zuko says, one eye out on the horizon as the sun dawns. “I like to think it was.”

“You’re a sap,” Sokka answers, voice still rough with sleep as he rolls awake on their bed. Suki lies beside him, mouth twitching in a dream. “But, yeah. Me too. It was always enough.”

“Has to be,” Suki murmurs, maybe not so asleep, after all. “What else is there if it isn’t?”)

There are many ways for this story to start. There are many ways for it to end, too, though we will try not too linger too much on them. We will look away and practice a smile on the mirror, close our eyes and focus on things when they were swift and beautiful and bright, when a summer’s day was always warm, and the good times were always good, and there was nothing to forgive. We will look at the boy in the iceberg, and the warriors, and the children, and the prince, and we will always be discovering magic for the first time.

Here is a well-known secret: everything ends, and that’s always sad.

Here is a not so well-known fact: everything begins again, and that’s always happy. And there is so much time—an immeasurable, unimaginable amount of time for us to crash and burn, to build ourselves up from scratch. Time is the only thing this world ever promises us.

. . . 

“Hey, Toph,” Sokka asks, as they sit next to each other in the gardens, a half-full bottle of wine between them and lips stained with red. “Where are you going after this?”

Because it’s been years since the war came to an end, and it’s nearly not illegal for them to be drinking right now. Because she had no home she wanted to go back to. Because this was a place that needed her, and as much as it kills her to admit it—she needed it, too. So, Toph says, “I have no fucking idea.”

Sokka hums, fingers giddy as they sort through strands of grass beneath his legs. “Does it scare you?”, he says, because he’s the sort of person who can’t help himself. “Not knowing?”

Toph shrugs, her hazy eyes gazing out into the turtleduck pond. “Not as much as it should, I guess,” she says. And, because she’s the sort of person who holds the things she’s handed as if daring them to break, she continues, “Why, Snoozles? Does it scare _you?_ ”

Sokka laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “It terrifies me. Every day.”

“It’s a wonder you’ve lived so far with all that worrying,” she comments, not unkindly. “The world spins. The day ends. Other than that, we don’t know a fucking thing.”

“Yeah,” Sokka murmurs, long after Toph has dozed off against his shoulder, night-drunk and dizzy with wine. “Yeah. It is a wonder, isn’t it?”

. . . 

Depending on who you ask, there are no beginnings and no ends. There is only a life and what we do with the time we are given. 

This is not a love story, and it never has been. It’s a story about a war and the children in it. It’s a story stained with the biases of time, and blood, and death, and an endless amount of grief. But, when the world rests on shoulders too young to bear it—isn’t it an impossible thing, that they still find enough place to grow? Isn’t that, in itself, what love truly means?

. . . 

“Are you sure?” Azula asks, eyes blown wide, face flushed. Aimah’s words and lips still linger on her neck, quiet and sweet, sheets tangled between their intertwined legs.

_I want to do this forever, if you’ll let me._

“I’m sure of very few things,” Aimah says. “Rain that falls in the forest tastes like earth. There is no light brighter than the sun. There is no sound sadder than the words _should have_. No feeling is final. And I want you forever. Whatever that means.”

Azula huffs a laugh, carding her fingers through Aimah’s hair. “No feeling is final,” she echoes. “You really know how to make a girl feel safe.”

Aimah raises her head and plants a kiss on Azula’s nose. “No, I don’t,” she says, earnest as all good things. “But this world only spins forward, and I love you.”

Azula’s face softens. “What does either of those things have to do with each other?”, she asks, just because.

“Everything,” Aimah answers.

This smile has become so much more than a wound.

. . . 

Starts and ends stretch out, far away on either end of a life. And it’s easier to just stay where you are right now. Just on the edge of something huge. Just past something horrible. It’s easier. It’s okay to linger. But never for too long.

Because the boy with the blue arrows will not be a boy forever. He will grow and laugh and fall in love; he will grieve and carry his people with him everywhere he goes, and he will get used to a heavy heart. There’s no growing past this. There is only moving forward. 

. . . 

There are a thousand metaphors to be made here. Aang understands the difference between an end and an ending better than anyone, and he’s the kind of person who has felt things so large they made death feel indistinguishable from air.

But we are guests in this story, and we will let him keep his grief. Aang will scream himself hoarse asking the spirits why, and cry like a child left alone for too long, and wonder if he’ll ever be able to take a single breath without something in him aching like a lost limb, if he’ll ever manage to go through his days and not leave stains of a time gone by behind.

It was unfair. It was wrong. 

Aang is a good person, so he’ll forgive. But he is also human, and some days, he will wonder if it would have been easier not to. If anger would cauterize the wound. 

(The first time he screams and bursts into bitter, furious tears, Zuko is almost relieved.)

“Katara,” Aang says, cracking one eye open. “What are you doing up?”

Katara smiles at him, curled up on a loveseat next to the bed, an open scroll on her hands. “Doing some light reading,” she answers. “Zuko thought I’d like it. He said it was from an old play, the kind that was banished after Sozin. It’s—,” she shakes her head. “I can’t stop reading it.”

“Nerd,” Aang quips, and Katara flicks his nose. 

“Hush, you,” she says. “I’ve been needing some happy endings, okay? Just to remember what they look like.”

Aang giggles, batting her hand away. “Come on, now,” he says, gently. “You woke me up. Can you read me to sleep again?”

“You’re such a _child_ ,” Katara says, without any heat, and settles back into her seat. “I’ll keep going from where _I_ stopped. You get no privileges.”

And when she starts reading, Aang feels like his chest is about to cave in. 

It’s an old play. An old story. Old words. Of course he knows them. Kuzon dragged him to see the show once, a lifetime ago, as a tradition before the Firelight festival. And though Aang only ever saw it once, well. There are things that only need that much time to grow.

He’s a boy too old for his own skin, and too young for the world he was meant to protect. As Katara reads, his breath hitches. His eyes sting. But he stays still, and lets her speak. 

He knows how this story ends. _But here is the thing_ , the narrator tells the audience, _to know how it ends, and still begin to sing it again—as if it might turn out this time…_

(And though this is a story of many beginnings and endings, it moves in cycles.

An airbender takes his last breath, in many years to come. And a Water Tribe girl takes her first.

There’s always something beautiful in stories like these, if you look close enough.)

**Author's Note:**

> so, yeah. this felt like necessary closure for the series. and yes, having aang being in the closing scene was completely and utterly intentional. like a story come full circle, huh? 
> 
> thank you so much for reading! as always, comments and kudos are appreciated -- and if you still want to yell at me, you can do that on twitter, @bornfrombeauty.
> 
> love you all.


End file.
